Jon Stewart on the Charleston shooting:
I didnât do my job today. Iâve got nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds because of what happened in South Carolina. And maybe if I wasnât nearing the end of the run or this wasnât such a common occurrence, maybe I could have pulled out of the spiral. But I didnât.
I honestly have nothing other than just sadness once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesnât exist. Iâm confident though, that by acknowledging it â by staring into that and seeing it for what it isâŚWe still wonât do jack shit. Yeah, thatâs us. And thatâs the part that blows my mind.
I donât want to get into the political argument of guns and things. What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us and us killing ourselvesâŚ
If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our [narrative]. We invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and [lost] thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over like five or six different counties, all to keep Americans safe. Weâve got to do whatever we can â weâll torture people. Weâve got to do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. But nine people shot in a church, what about that? âHey, what are you going go to do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?â
Thatâs the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around. And you know itâs gonna go down the same path. âThis is a terrible tragedy.â They are already using the nuanced language of lack of effort for this.
This is a terrorist attack. This is a violent attack on the Emanuel Church in South Carolina which is a symbol for the black community. It has stood in that part of Charleston for a hundred and some years and has been attacked viciously many times â as many black churches have. And to pretend that â I heard someone on the news say â âtragedy has visited this churchâ. This wasnât a tornado. This was a racist. This was a guy with a Rhodesia badge on his sweater. So the idea that â I hate to even use this pun â but this one is black and white. Thereâs no nuance here. And weâre gonna keep pretending like, âI donât get it, what happened. This one guy lost his mind.â
But we are steeped in that culture in this country and we refuse to recognize it. And I cannot believe how hard people are working to discount it. In South Carolina, the roads that people drive on are named for Confederate generals who fought to keep black people from being able to drive freely on that road. Thatâs insanity. Thatâs racial wallpaper. You canât allow that.
Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them â who wanted to start some kind of civil war. The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina and the roads are named for Confederate generals. And the white guy is the one who feels his countryâs being taken away from him. Weâre bringing it on ourselves.
And thatâs the thing â Al Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS â theyâre not shit compared to the damage that we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis.
